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It was never going to be easy being Britain’s last European commissioner.

Julian King isn’t disproving the maxim.

Yet the bespectacled British diplomat’s Brussels predicament comes with an added layer of difficulty and discomfort for him and his colleagues. King got the European Union’s security portfolio, created specifically for him, to oversee efforts to fight terrorism at a time of heightened public anxiety. As he has struggled to make this job work, according to critics and supporters, he lays himself and the EU open to an explosive charge: An opportunity is being wasted to address Europe-wide shortcomings on security, with genuine life-and-death consequences.

While the EU’s efforts to improve coordination of its terror policies have stalled for the better part of two decades — and it’s hardly clear that anyone else in King’s position could do better — King is in a particularly brutal lose-lose-lose situation. He’s blamed for being British. He’s blamed for being ineffective on terror policy. And he’s blamed for being ineffective because he’s British.

To the critics, King’s allegiance to the United Kingdom leads him to shy from taking strong political stances that could ruffle feathers in London or EU capitals. He’s a British civil servant on loan to the Commission, unlike the other career politicians in the College, presumably bound to return to government work in London. Coming from a country that’s leaving, he’s not an effective champion for closer cooperation among EU member countries.

As a result, he has been left marginalized in Brussels by colleagues who view London more as a divorcing spouse than trusted ally.

“My aim is to walk out of this building with my head held high because we will have worked right until the last moment to make progress” — Julian King

“Julian King is a professional commissioner, but … a British commissioner in charge of such a vital matter is far from an ideal situation,” said Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal ALDE group and the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator. “The country that nominated him is unclear, to say the least, about how to step up the anti-terror capacity on a European level, and that is a liability.”

In an interview, King insisted he has achieved concrete results and that he prefers to get things done behind the scenes, rather than in the media limelight. “I want to make progress,” he said. “I am not in this to make headlines.”

His office in the Berlaymont is filled with patriotic British memorabilia, including three Union Flag cushions and a framed photograph of Queen Elizabeth II on the wall. He keeps a cardboard box stashed at the bottom of a cupboard into which — at stroke of midnight on March 29, 2019, when the U.K. ceases to be a member of the EU — he said he plans to sweep his belongings and make for the exit.

“I am in this business for the next year and a bit,” King said. “My aim is to walk out of this building with my head held high because we will have worked right until the last moment to make progress.”

Being Julian King

King’s appointment last year was born of a Brussels compromise. Though it had just voted to leave the EU, the U.K. still needed a commissioner to sit at the Berlaymont. This person’s portfolio couldn’t be a top one that intruded on any of the other 27, who were not shy in expressing their annoyance and fury over the referendum vote.

Julian King previously headed Peter Mandelson’s office when he was the British commissioner | European Union

King, a veteran diplomat, was chosen by David Cameron in his final days as prime minister to fill the vacancy left by Jonathan Hill, who resigned as the European Commission’s financial services chief.

The Brit is no stranger to Brussels. From 2004 to 2008, as one of Britain’s three ambassadors accredited at the EU, he was the U.K.’s representative on the political and security committee, which gathers senior national security officials. After that stint, he headed Peter Mandelson’s office when he was the British commissioner. King has also been the U.K.’s ambassador to Ireland and France.

Cameron initially asked King to be put in charge of environment policy. Instead he got “the security union,” a previously nonexistent position that sounded prestigious, didn’t step on any other commissioner’s toes and covered an area where both sides indicated they wanted to keep strong links even after Brexit.

“The focus of your portfolio work should therefore be on concrete operational measures where the action of the EU can have an impact — and where we can show that this does not compromise our commitment to fundamental rights and values,” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in his mission letter to King.

Arriving a few months after suicide bombers killed 32 people not far from the Berlaymont, King walked into a role EU leaders had long identified was needed. In a Europe of open borders, governments were too slow to work together to address a threat that has grown more sinister and innovative in recent years. King was supposed to plug the obvious gaps — and to use his bully pulpit to shame EU countries to do more themselves.

Before 9/11, counterterrorism wasn’t handled by any office of the EU. It took the July 7, 2005 bombings in London to force the first comprehensive review of terrorism by the EU, when the U.K. held the rotating presidency of the bloc. The result was the European Union Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which, over 17 pages, laid out priorities such as protecting potential targets better and improving joint responses to attacks.

Still, little happened until the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015 in Paris. The EU then launched the European Agenda on Security to make good on its pledge to better share information and seek common solutions to the problem of the radicalization of European youth. And after the Brussels bombings last year, a “Security Union” was launched to “move beyond the concept of cooperating to protect national internal security to the idea of protecting the collective security of the Union as a whole” and once again, emphasizing better information sharing.

King said he has taken advantage of the political support to push for more robust counterterrorism cooperation. He pointed to a 40 percent increase in queries made by national police and border officials to the European Schengen Information System (SIS II) database, a key tool for combating cross-border crime, since his appointment. Others said King didn’t have much of a hand in this, noting individual countries increased their use of the database as the cross-border threat became clearer in the past two years.

Since he took office, King said that he has “proposed new legislative measures on strengthening information exchange, and an ambitious plan to get EU databases working together better, as well as new legal proposals on terrorist finance.”

Critics counter King has made less progress than was possible and failed to use his position to become a strong advocate for change. European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos called for a European FBI and Europol’s British chief Rob Wainwright called out EU countries in the aftermath of the 2015 Paris attacks, bemoaning the existence of an “intelligence black hole” created by their reluctance to share information. King has never shamed countries this way, say critics. Nor, they add, has he proposed ambitious reforms or ideas.

“I had higher expectations from a security commissioner, although the Commission is the problem,” said Sophie In ‘t Veld, a Dutch member of the liberal ALDE party. “They talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk.”

Europol’s director Rob Wainwright | Jerry Lampen/AFP via Getty Images

One senior EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said King had the expertise and the diplomatic and political muscle to “push member states to work closer on such issues.”

“But he is not using it because his direct line with London is very strong,” the official said, noting that London has always been reluctant to hand over any additional authority to the EU in security.

Territory

Though it is not a defense King puts forward, there are those who do note the numerous structural disadvantages he faces in Brussels. His mandate was sketched out in vague terms, and without necessarily the means to implement it. Unlike the other 27 commissioners, he can’t draw on any directorate general — basically a ministry stuffed full of civil servants — to deploy. His nationality is seen as a disadvantage in trying to convince national governments to give up control or even cooperate with Brussels.

To many officials and lawmakers working on counterterrorism in Brussels and across the EU, King’s appointment added just another layer of red tape.

Improving intelligence sharing and reinforcing the fight against radicalization and cybercrime is also supposed to be the job of the European Council’s counterterrorism coordinator Gilles de Kerchove.

“There are more people making a living from terrorism than dying from terrorism in the EU,” said a senior diplomat in charge of security for one large EU country.

At the same time, King’s portfolio strays into the territory of fellow Commissioner Avramopoulos, who is in charge of migration, home affairs and citizenship. And EU officials who work with both commissioners say King is overshadowed by the Greek.

King played down tensions with his Greek counterpart Dimitris Avramopoulos |

“They often sit in meetings together whose competence would fall more in King’s portfolio, but Avramopoulus takes the floor for 20 minutes, then turns around and asks King if he has anything to add,” said a senior security official who has attended several meetings with both men.

A 2017 European Parliament report assessing all of the EU’s counterterrorism policies concluded that “too many actors are involved in the design and implementation of this policy area, the tasks of the individual actors at times overlap.”

King played down tensions with his Greek counterpart, saying the fact that “more than one person” is working on counterterrorism issues is a plus, not a minus.

The latest evidence of King’s lack of influence in Brussels came earlier this month in the European Parliament, when a key discussion on information sharing among EU countries was spearheaded by Avramopoulos — not King, even though this is one of his primary tasks. Several MEPs were taken aback by his absence.

“In this field of anti-terrorism there needs to be quick movement. I had hoped that King was understanding this, but he hasn’t proposed anything” — German MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht

“I was a little surprised to talk only to Avramopoulos,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German MEP who serves as vice chair of the civil liberties committee. “It showed that when it comes to counterterrorism, the Commission does not really have a plan and there are these two commissioners working in parallel that are a bit the same.”

“In this field of anti-terrorism there needs to be quick movement,” Albrecht said. “I had hoped that King was understanding this, but he hasn’t proposed anything and the fact is that Avramopoulos is now leading.”

In the interview, King dismissed his critics’ claims that loyalties were divided. He cited a track record of 25 years of cooperation with, and working in, the European institutions as proof that not only does he take his oath of office as commissioner to put the EU’s interests first “very seriously,” but that working with the EU is part of his DNA.

“In fact, I am married to the institutions,” he said, referring to his wife, Lotte Knudsen, a senior Danish official in the EU’s diplomatic arm, the European External Action Service.

jodocus5

Given the previous rate of progress, Mr. King has done well I think.

Posted on 10/12/17 | 3:04 PM CET

edmunddraecker

A little disappointing the article misattributes Avramopoulos’ capacity to interefere to King’s “lack of influence”. King holds his portfolio firmly, but his hands are tied: Juncker mandated King only to support Avramopoulos’ work, placing him below A. in terms of hierarchy. (Mission letter : “(…) I would like you to be the Commissioner for the Security Union, (…) supporting the work of the Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship.”)

The question should rather be why Avramopoulos places his own ego over the Commission’s capability to work effectively on this crucial issue, and why noone in the Presidency seems to bother to fix this.

Posted on 10/14/17 | 7:00 AM CET

Jacques

Should have given him the multilingualism portfolio. Security is too important an issue to be handled by an exiting MS.

Posted on 10/16/17 | 10:47 AM CET

Drakes drum

The fact that we continue to pay for membership of this organisation and get ignored, we should leave now, stop paying now and then start talks about how much we owe. The fury that others felt about the referendum had more to do with their cash flow reversing than anything else. We have just been a cash cow to be milked for the last 40 years, no more, time for the smaller countries in the eu to find out just how important they are to France and Germany. The answer is writ large in Greece, they don’t care and the beggaration of your people won’t matter to the elites